What is E-commerce?
Electronic commerce or e-commerce is a term for any type of business, or commercial transaction, that involves the transfer of information across the Internet. It covers a range of different types of businesses, from consumer based retail sites, through auction or music sites, to business exchanges trading goods and services between corporations. It is currently one of the most important aspects of the Internet to emerge.
What do you need to have an online store and what exactly is a shopping cart?
Shopping cart software is an operating system used to allow consumers to purchase goods and or services, track customers, and tie together all aspects of e-commerce into one cohesive whole.
How do online shopping carts differ from those found in a grocery store? The image is one of an invisible shopping cart. You enter an online store, see a product that fulfills your demand and you place it into your virtual shopping basket. When you are through browsing, you click checkout and complete the transaction by providing payment information.
E-commerce companies smartly ride the Holiday Shopping wave
The role of responsive e-commerce web design and development does not just lie in the creation of an engaging website but in also rendering efficacy in handling all those times of the year when shopping is at its very best. End of the year is perhaps the biggest shopping season across the world and e-commerce businesses need to be all the more agile and proactive in realizing maximum potential. Steps they take during this phase do not just yield temporary results but create a platform for long term benefit accumulation. Here are things marketers can do to ride the holiday shopping wave that can take them to their destination successfully.
The ‘Right’ Bible
Right is not an option. Although there are numerous sources that can predict customer behavior, none of these can be deemed 100 percent right.
Social channels are neither saturated nor emerging
Interestingly, 90 percent of online content that has been doing its rounds in the past two years are predominantly from social platforms.
Languages cannot be overruled
Not too long ago, about 80 percent of the population that surfed online knew English but today the same cannot be said.
Beyond language
E-commerce websites must also consider global culture. They are as varied as language and while English may have permeated into different cultures, there has been little or no dilution in terms of the culture by itself.
There are many facets to e-commerce web design and development. Maintaining the right balance is often key to deriving the right strategy.
Top E-commerce Development Platforms 2013
Magneto vs. Shopify vs. Volusion vs. BigCommerce
Choosing an e-Commerce platform is one of the most important decisions you’ll make when running an online business. The right platform should be empowering, not encumbering. It should give you the tools you need to run your business and take care of all the messy technical stuff by itself.
Magento
With over 200,000 installations, Magento is among the most popular e-Commerce platforms in the world. It is free, open-source, and counts Nike, War by Parker, and Paul Smith among its clients. As a highly scalable, powerful platform with a huge library of existing extensions, it is particularly suitable for start-ups and traditional retailers looking to make the jump online.
Shopify
Shopify is a beloved platform among small retailers and start-ups that want an easy to use, easy to set-up e-Commerce store.
Volusion
Volusion is often hailed as the industry standard for self-hosted e-Commerce platforms. First launched in 1999, it has certainly been around long enough to earn that reputation. With a huge customer base and more than a decade’s experience, Volusion is one of the platform choices for your website.
Big Commerce
Big Commerce is one of the more prominent all-in-one e-Commerce and shopping cart solution. It is favoured by young start-ups and small retailers that value ease of use, reliability and affordability.
Global E-commerce Trends for 2014
2013 has been another big year for e-commerce and we can expect this to continue forward with new trends emerging for the upcoming year. Keeping up with the constant growth and innovation of e-commerce is essential to stay competitive in the online retail market.
Let’s see what we can expect to drive the industry as we look forward to the the global e-commerce trends for 2014.
- SEO, SEO and more SEO
- The Large Data Note
- The M-Commerce Length
- The Ultimate User Experience
- Now Everyone’s a Socialite
Top 5 Largest Online Retailers
1. Amazon.com Inc.
Online Sales: $48,080,000,000
20113 Growth: 40.60%
Yes, I know it may come as a shock but Amazon is, indeed, the largest online retailer in the world. It leads the online retailers’ top by a very long margin and it will continue to do so for a very long time, if we are to look at its continuous growth, its innovative practices and its aggressive expansion.
2. Staples Inc.
Online Sales: $10,600,000,000
2013 Growth: 3.90%
The first company in this list to cross the $10 billion in online sales threshold is Staples, the largest office supply chain in the world. Staples has more than 2000 stores in 26 countries but it plans to slash its brick and mortar space by 15% and focus on online sales.
3. Apple Inc.
Online Sales: $6,660,000,000
2013 Growth: 27.40%
As I am writing this post Exxon surpassed Apple to become, once again, the largest company in the world. However, Apple is still valued at $413 billion and it is still the coolest thing in technology. The company started its online sales operations in in November 1997, an year after acquiring NeXT Computers and bringing back Steve Jobs.
4. Walmart.com
Online sales: $4,900,000,000
2013 Growth: + 19.70%
Walmart is big. Really big. It operates more than 10.000 retail units in 27 countries. It’s net sales in 2012 increased 5.9% to 443.9 billion dollars. Big as it might be, Walmart did miss the start and that’s one of the reasons it’s “only” no.4 on our list. But worry not – the company expands its operations online as aggressively as it does with its brick and mortar stores and soon it will be fighting for the top position.
5. Dell Inc.
Online sales: $4,609,728,000
2013 Growth: – 4%
Dell is the only company in this top to have a negative growth. The decrease in sales is a direct result of global PC sales contraction in 2011. If your company is not named Apple and your business has something to do with PC’s, than 2011 was probably one of the worst years for you. In fact Dell’s PC’s shipments declined 8% throughout the year so that makes dell.com’s sales 200% better than the overall company performance.
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